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"These loud ancestral boasts of yours,
How can they else than vex us?
Where were your dinner orators
When slavery grasped at Texas?
Dumb on his knees was every one
That now is bold as Cæsar ;
Mere pegs to hang an office on
Such stalwart men as these are."

"Good sir," I said, "you seem much stirred; The sacred compromises -"

"Now God confound the dastard word!
My gall thereat arises :
Northward it hath this sense alone,

That you, your conscience blinding,
Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone,
When slavery feels like grinding.

""T is shame to see such painted sticks
In Vane's and Winthrop's places,

To see your spirit of Seventy-six
Drag humbly in the traces,
With slavery's lash upon her back,
And herds of office-holders

To shout applause, as, with a crack,
It peels her patient shoulders.

"We forefathers to such a rout!

No, by my faith in God's word!” Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The ghost of his old broadsword, Then thrust it slowly back again,

And said, with reverent gesture,

"No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture.

"I feel the soul in me draw near
The mount of prophesying;
In this bleak wilderness I hear
A John the Baptist crying ;
Far in the east I see upleap

The streaks of first forewarning,
And they who sowed the light shall reap
The golden sheaves of morning.

"Child of our travail and our woe,
Light in our day of sorrow,
Through my rapt spirit I foreknow
The glory of thy morrow;

I hear great steps, that through the shade
Draw nigher still and nigher,

And voices call like that which bade

The prophet come up higher."

I looked, no form mine eyes could find,
I heard the red cock crowing,
And through my window-chinks the wind
A dismal tune was blowing;
Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham
Hath somewhat in him gritty,

Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham,
And he will print my ditty.

THE COURTIN'.

OD makes sech nights, all white an
still

Fur 'z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown
An' peeked in thru' the winder,
An' there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.

A fireplace filled the room's one side
With half a cord o' wood in

There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'.

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her,
An' leetle flames danced all about
The chiny on the dresser.

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung,
An' in amongst 'em rusted

The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young
Fetched back from Concord busted.

The very room, coz she was in,

Seemed warm from floor to ceilin',
An' she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez the apples she was peelin'.

'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,

A dogrose blushin' to a brook
Ain't modester nor sweeter.

He was six foot o' man, A 1,
Clear grit an' human natur';

None could n't quicker pitch a ton
Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells — All is, he could n't love 'em.

But long o' her his veins 'ould run
All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o' sun
Ez a south slope in Ap'il.

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;

My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring,
She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An' she 'd blush scarlet, right in prayer,
When her new meetin'-bunnet
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upon it.

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!

She seemed to 've gut a new soul,

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